We tailor most marketing videos towards potential clients and leads. While we all know it is important to spend resources attracting more customers sometimes it is just as critical to market to different stakeholders like current and future employees.
Recently we had a conversation with a person in human resources at an industrial company. She was interested in our thoughts on how to convey their culture to prospective employees. Immediately I thought of video. I firmly believe that video allows you to put your best foot forward and gives potential employees a real insight into your company.
If you are thinking about a human resources video of your own, whether for recruitment or internal employees, here is some advice on the keys for your human resource videos.
Goal: Know what you want to accomplish ahead of time. Remember to focus on the most important results you want to see. Are you trying to build a recruitment base or illustrate your company culture to new employees?
One of the most critical parts of goal setting is to ensure that your goals are SMART. That stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Making your goals, SMART is the only way to know if you have met your objective.
If you want more information about building SMART goals, you can download our template here.
All and Nothing: Remember what your objective is and stick to it. Don’t try to make a video that appeals to everyone and does everything. That is a great way to make a bad video.
A video for recruiting is not going to be the same as a video for a shareholders meeting.
Chose Your Cast Based on Your Audience: Depending on the video it might help to have people that are at different levels of the organization. If you are recruiting for a large financial services company, not many of your future employees are going to be in the C-suite so be sure to feature employees that they can relate to easier.
Be Genuine: There is a difference between being prepared to speak on film and sounding like a corporate robot. Newsflash: Nobody believes the corporate robot. So make sure that the people that appear in your video are genuine and real.
A way to do this is to get everyone who will be on film comfortable. You might want to practice a few takes and be prepared to run through the video a few time until everyone gets used to the camera and nerves settle.
“Being unique and being respectful of your audience’s time goes a long way to a successful video.”
Length: Make sure there is no fluff in your video. Be stern with the editing knife. This all starts when you build your script and continues to the final edit.
If possible, have an outside objective partner do the video editing. Choose someone that is not beholden to anyone in the company and removed from company politics.
Most videos should be under three minutes long but a two-minute video is better and a minute and a half is probably the ideal. Get in, tell your story and get out.
Originality: There are a lot of bad corporate videos out there that have the same feel. If I had a dollar for every executive explaining their company with a potted plant in the background I would be writing this blog on my yacht.
Don’t make a boring video! If you can’t think of an exciting or entertaining premise contact a professional video marketer who can help you. Your human resources video’s originality works hand in hand with length. Being unique and being respectful of your audience’s time goes a long way to a successful video.
It’s all about showmanship, right?
Now the question is what videos to create? Here are some examples that might work for you.
Introduction Video: This is a very general way to introduce your company. It is probably the most used and, in my opinion, the least effective when it comes to new employees.
The problem is that many companies tend to focus on hard facts like the number of employees, locations, and sales amounts. These are not very relevant to new or prospective employees. If you want to do a general introduction, try to focus on the human aspect of your company for the video.
You need to find something that a new employee would relate to, perhaps a benefit of working for the company outside of the usual medical, dental and 401-k
Interview Video: This type of marketing video is more geared towards a deep dive with one key individual. It could be a CEO or CFO or a more junior employee.
Once again I think interview videos are more effective if they are relatable to individual employees. For instance, if you want to illustrate growth potential at your company focus on someone who has worked their way up the ladder of the company.
Culture Video: One of the central questions that I ask companies is, “What is your culture like?” I imagine that a lot of future employees ask that question as well.
Video is a great way to illustrate your culture with the bonus that you can approach a “company culture video” in a lot of different ways. You can focus on the work environment, company mission, values, expectations goals, etc.
However, the key is to hone in one aspect that is the most engaging to potential employees and zero in on that.
For that reason, I broke out the Values below. Feel free to substitute “values” for any of the above subsets.
Values Video: the values of your company can be an exciting way to introduce your business to prospective new employees. An example of this video might be a talk with one of your senior members of management. Or possibly use snippets of different employees talking about what they think the values of the company are.
Interested in creating a recruiting video that speaks to your potential recruiting base? Sign up to talk about an introductory video with no obligation and qualify for a 25% discount if you proceed with a video project.